6 Ways to Speed up your Drobo
Read this article to know how you can speed up your Drobo devices. Know the steps and precautions you must take to keep your Drobo running at its full potential always.
Drobo can best be described as an external storage hardware device. Such a device connects to a computer with the help of a FireWire, USB, iSCSI, or eSATA and permits a user to connect as much as 4 or 8 SATA enabled hard drives in it. What sets Drobo apart from the rest of the solutions is the relative ease with which one can connect several drives into one particular external storage device while also having saved data copied into the drive with the help of Raid. Among its other advantages is that in the event of a failure of your drive, your data will still remain safe and protected. Raid technology permits the user to load the Drobo with whatever drives that they may have whether it be any size, speed or brand. This method is especially beneficial as it can save the user a great deal of money in comparison to other forms of Raid technology as it allows the user to expand in a slow-paced manner and to purchase drives when the price is cost-effective. In the case of the normal Raid boxes, the drives are required to be identical. However, the simple nature of the Drobo system does seemingly have an effect on the overall speed. Even though these systems are found to be much slower than that of other devices, they are still well equipped to hold enormous speeds in comparison to that of a single standard spinning hard disk device and they are also typically helpful as data is usually safe requiring less drobo data recovery services. However, if you find that your device is slower than you would anticipate, here are some suggestions on how best to speed things up. 1. Do away with the backup volume
Time Machine and contemporary Drobo systems often go hand in hand and when the user enables such a function, it allows for a second volume on the device which, in turn, will sandbox your Time Machine backup files. This is particularly useful because you won't need to purchase another drive for this very same purpose. But in the longer run, this can cause issues as the Drobo has a limited bandwidth and if the Time Machine is activated while you are accessing other files from the Drobo, it is likely that you will encounter slower speed. Another factor to keep in mind is the backup volume can also contribute to reduced speed. 2. More drives have a better speed than big drives
The greater number of drives that you have in your Drobo, the better the speed. Meaning thereby, that it is ideal to have 5 x 5TB drive in your 5-bay Drobo, as compared to a pair of 16TB drives that has 3 empty slots. While sizes may be immaterial, the sheer number of drives is essential. It is for this very same reason that the Drobo 8D tends to be quicker than that of the Drobo 5D3, so that it can have surplus drives. So whenever you plan to purchase any particular drive you require for your Drobo along with the drive calculator, you should always keep in mind the amount of storage space which you will require. Thereafter, you can create the storage space with numerous drives. 3. Always utilize 7200RPM Drives
It is worth noting that hard disks are available in different speeds i.e. 5400rpm as well as 7200rpm. Drives that are equipped with 7200rpm have better features especially in terms of greater write and read speeds and when you load your Drobo with those particular files, chances are that it will be far quicker than one that is 5400rpm drives. It is never a good idea to blend both drives in a Drobo. Your files are prevalent in all the drives so that whatever you wish to access, the Drobo will continue to access all those slower drives in order to gain some of the data. One drive that comes highly recommended for your Drobo is the Barracuda or Seagate IronWolf. Seagate's warranty service is far more advanced than Western Digital. These are the same drives that are tested out in the Drobo labs. 4. Refrain from filling your Drobo
Most drives have a shelf life and will eventually slow down once they reach their maximum capacity. But in the case of the Drobo, the speed may reduce sooner than anticipated. Drobo Dashboard may send you red and yellow warnings for when you need to insert a greater capacity drive in order to broaden the storage volume. But by that time, the slowdown of your Drobo will have already happened. It is advisable to have your volume available at least up to 30%. By the time you reach 25 %, you'll definitely begin to encounter a slowdown. 5. Utilise a Msata Accelerator Bay
Certain Drobo devices namely the 5N2 and the 5D3 are known as Accelerator Bay which is located on the bottom of them and in turn, allows an Msata SSD. SSD is known as solid state drives and shown to be much quicker than the ordinary hard drives. Once you insert an Msata SS into this bay, this will cause the Drobo to store regularly utilized files on the SSD which in turn, will allow quicker read speeds onto those files. The positive aspect of this is that it does not impact the write speeds for the files are written onto the hard drives and are only transferred to the SSD at a later stage if they become frequently utilized. 6. Utilize data aware tiering
It is crucial to note that the data aware tiering is the only viable option in the 12-bay and 8-bay Drobos. In case, you own any of those, you should consider setting it up. With the data aware tiering, you place a 2.5″ SSDs in the front slots instead of utilizing all HDDs in the Drobo. In order for this to work, you will need to slide in at least two SSDs or even three, provided you have the dual drive redundancy turned on. When the Drobo determines sufficient SSDs and HHDs in the front bays, it works on the same par as the Accelerator. It does so by cleverly transferring regularly utilized files to the SSDs. The only divergence here is that it also passes transactional information to these SSDs which in turn, will improve write and read speeds alike and not just the read speeds just like in the case of the Accelerator Bay. Another advantage associated with the Accelerator Bay is that one can obtain 2.5 of SSDs in a much larger size as opposed to the Msata SSD chips, so it's much easier to just add many terabytes of the accelerated SSD storage. For many, this is the more preferred route and this will help to cover their most regularly accessed files.
References:
• "6 Ways to Speed up Your Drobo." Shutter Muse, 7 Dec. 2019, shuttermuse.com/6-ways-to-speed-up-your-drobo/.
